Hi everyone. Would like to first say thanks to the website creators and all the people who keep this site up and running. A great site that has helped me learn and have lots of fun.

I was wondering if there was a way to trace an uploaded file? Say a website uploads a game or video, could you find out where it came from? For instance, people upload videos onto youtube all the time, could you trace something like that?

If there's an article anyone knows of on this subject I'll be happy to do all the reading .

And as a side note I'm having trouble with, go figure, the ping command. I type in ping 1.1.1.1 (whatever address) and it asks me: "Would you like to broadcast this? Then -b"Using Backtrack 5 r3

First, you can see who uploaded the video . In terms of seeing what IP address it came from, I doubt that would be stored in the information of the video or the user. In terms of files, yes you can. I have received many keyloggers what route to another computer. Just opening up 2/3rds of them in notepad showed the routing IP. From there you can report that IP, and even if it is a VPN, a chain reaction of problems may be solved to find out who sent it to you. And yes, you can report an IP address for suspected cyber crime.

Other files such as applications and programs should have easy to find information to an update IP/website or where you originally downloaded it from.

The tracert command, as far as I know, will not give you the kind of information to get a video's original IP address.

I hope I answered what you are looking for. May I ask why you want the IP address a Youtube video originated from?

As for the pinging with backtrack, you don't need backtrack just to ping something using linux...

I was hoping that wouldn't come across that way. I don't want to track an uploaded youtube video, but couldn't think of a good example.

I made the mistake of downloading software code that really messed up my old computer awhile back. I'm new to Linux and the opensource software, where you download everything you want on your own and then you install it over command prompt... and well all that.